I'm trying to set up a local instance of the AT just as a sandbox but it's hanging part way through the node install. It's on a Mac running High Sierra for what it's worth.
It gets to 'Node dependencies installed successfully' and then starts 'Updating Adapt framework plugin 'adapt-contrib-vanilla' but this line never completes.
I've been playing around with it most of the afternoon to no avail. Has anyone else seen this happen or got any fixes?
Cheers
Jonathan
What version of the authoring tool are you trying to install? I ask purely cause I notice it's trying to install v2.4.0 of the Framework which is pretty ancient and should really only be used if you are in the highly unfortunate position of needing to support IE8/9/10...
Well that does seem to be the issue. I started over and input v4.2.0 against the framework and all good.
However, 2.4.0 was 'given' as the default so does that need changing?
Whilst on the topic, the relationship between the framework and the authoring tool does seem a little unnecessarily mysterious (to me at least). I can't see any info that tells me X version of the AT requires Y version of the framework. Or am I not looking in the right place?
Jonathan
I started over and input v4.2.0 against the framework and all good.
That's good - though slightly concerning that it was failing. But as we're planning to stop supporting FW v2.x in the new year (to celebrate the killing off of Windows 7 by Microsoft) I'm not going to worry too much about this!
However, 2.4.0 was 'given' as the default so does that need changing?
Quite possibly. Perhaps someone involved more on the AAT side could comment on this.
I can't see any info that tells me X version of the AT requires Y version of the framework. Or am I not looking in the right place?
That's because up until recently there wasn't much in the way of dependency between the two. We tried to make it so that you could run pretty much any version of the FW in the AAT. I think AAT v0.8.0/FW v4.2.0 was the first time we introduced any version dependency. You can see that here
I'm getting there… so, my understanding: an instance of the Authoring Tool is tied to a version of the framework - ergo you can't update the framework to a new release, you have create a whole new instance of Adapt and hence export/import content to that new instance. Is that correct?
All of which is fine, with the stumbling block being a probable number of plugins that haven't been updated to work with framework #4 and / or have been customised locally.
Do you know of a guide anywhere to updating plugins for the later framework?
You can safely update the AAT's FW to a new release of the same major version i.e. update from v4.1 to v4.4
What IS more problematic is updating to a new major release as there's a good chance that stuff will break.
I think the best option is to export a few courses and test them in the FW to see what will break; then go from there. If you want to play it safe and create a new instance of the AAT rather than update your existing one... well that would make sense.
From having updated quite a few (FW-only courses) I can say that your major problem going from an older version to v4 will be with any plugins that extend or have dependencies upon the functionality of the core components, in particular because of all the changes we made to split them properly into model/view. The (rarely used) pointGMCQ component currently doesn't work with v4 for that reason.
Aside from that the accessibility functionality was the biggest recent change; that's documented here. As a general rule, implement accessibility is actually now much simpler.
Otherwise it generally is quite straightforward and most plugins seem to work fine. Ones to keep an eye on are those that haven't been touched the the developer in years; check the github repo to see.
Thanks for your pointers Matt – much appreciated. I see that the original issue with the hang is now open as https://github.com/adaptlearning/adapt_authoring/issues/2457